Winning isn't everything

Baseball is the most maturing and deepening of all sports, with the possible exception of fishing. And it demands the most theological discipline. Unlike football, in which fans and players can dream of a perfect season, in baseball, as in life, you never win them all. No matter how much a team prepares, no matter how much it spends on salaries, no matter the size of its market, defeat is fundamental. No batter hits all the time; a “perfect game” is surpassingly rare. Longtime baseball fans and players must learn to accept loss, lots of it. Only five teams in the past century have won 70 percent of their games. No baseball fan is capable of committing the sin of perfectionism.